Title: Cade
Author: V.A. Dold
Genre: fantasy; romance; paranormal; series; shifter
Synopsis: (from Goodreads) Anna James is single again, finally. In her opinion, men are self-centered and will never love her for who she is, a beautiful, plus sized woman. All except the fantasy man that she’s been meeting in her dreams for five years. She just never expected her fantasy to be a real live alpha shifter… Cade Le Beau isn’t what he seems. He’s a billionaire wolf. A Shifter. He laments his missed chance six months ago to meet his fantasy woman in the flesh. Just as his second chance presents itself, his fantasy woman, his mate, is threatened by the local mob boss and her ex-husband. Now, he has forty eight hours to deal with this threat once and for all or chance losing her again. Is it Anna who’s in danger, or the humans who unwittingly threaten her? The heat is on the moment they lay eyes on each other. Neither, age, children, horrid ex-husbands, nor mob bosses will stop this love affair.
Review: Thanks to a weekly BookBub email, this was recommended to me as a free Kindle download. I loved the pace of this read. I read it in one sitting. I liked the story overall, but in terms of development, there wasn’t much, that’s why I’ve given it a 3/5. That being said, here are my general thoughts on Cade: Le Beau Brothers #1:
As far as paranormal romance novels go, this one ticks all the boxes of things I’m looking for in them. It had a strong family unit, which I’ve come to associate with wolf/shifter novels in the paranormal realm of writing. I liked the family unit as a whole, although I would have enjoyed more development of these secondary characters — there were many openings for Dold to give Stefan more than just charm, or for the more and father to be more than static, but, I guess as this is just book one of the Le Beau Brothers, perhaps their development comes later.
Cade as a male lead was everything you expect from a romance novel. Strong, built, emotionally open, protective. Couple that with his wolf instincts, and you’ve got yourself a bonafide prince, right? Well, exactly. Anna gets her dream man, literally. I enjoy that. In some romance novels — too many, if we’re being honest — the dream man has some skeleton in his closet that brings the whole relationship into question. This, thankfully, was not the case here. Cade’s devotion to Anna was well written, and although I did find him to be a bit overprotective, Anna’s ability to be more than a wilting flower helped me get past it.
Pacing — At some points in the story it felt like too much was being revealed too soon, and then repeated later, almost like an editing error. Like, when Cade begins to reveal parts of the mating process, some of these aspects come back later, where they seem more natural.
While I’m not sure I’ll pick up the rest of the series, this first book was a fun, fast summer read.
chelsea usher 